A Visit to Newgate by Charles Dickens... Inside prison walls!!

“A Visit to Newgate” by Charles Dickens describes the winding and obscure twists of the prison and the multitude of guards responsible for its security. His writing just flows so well; he is, without the shadow of a doubt, the writer I enjoyed the most so far. This essay illustrates for the reader the way in which prisoners are estranged. Dickens advocates that the world is composed of good people and some, regrettably, inherently bad, from whom the good people should be sheltered against. He is trying, through thorough descriptions, to make his reader envision the scene when someone ever comes to visit the convicts. Around half way through the third page of the passage, Dickens is referring to a girl seen visiting her incarcerated mother. His analysis of that “meeting” or should we call it “re-encounter” is sumptuously described; there is no word to add to it.
First, the remarks show the author's strong concern for children who, because of unlucky situation, are found in such deplorable scenarios. Facing your mother throughout the “bars of evil,” as we call a prison back home, is not an easy state to comprehend and accept. Even though, a famous quote states: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” The portrait of the girl coming in is striking, as we can notice in that sentence: “The girl belonged to a class -unhappily but too expensive- the very existence of which should make men's hearts bleed.” (second paragraph on the fourth page) Despite such compassion, Dickens acknowledges that at a certain point in time, those same people have “messed up” and “went over the line” to the point of losing themselves. These are the times when society should recognize these institutions are present and useful to “host” them. In a few words, supporting the hint that jails isolated their worst inmates in extremely inappropriate and horrible circumstances, Dickens indicates that in a “dismal passage,” one finds “three or four dark cells for the accommodation of refractory prisoners” (third paragraph on the fifth page). The use of the word “refractory” is significant to note, suggesting as it does one who is dead set against remedy or cure. He mentions an extraordinary example of the kind when he talks about fourteen young lads in the Newgate “School” of whom he puts pen to paper: "We never looked upon a more disagreeable sight, because we never saw fourteen such hopeless creatures of neglect before." (top of the sixth page). As if the point was not yet obvious enough, Dickens called the boys “a disagreeable sight,” “hopeless” and “creatures of neglect” in only one fairly short sentence.

Shortly thereafter, Dickens explains that “prisoners of the more respectable class are confined” (top of the sixth page) in an area distinct from their incurable brethren.
“A Visit to Newgate” includes an extensive concern of a condemned man's ultimate hours. For example, in the essay, Dickens writes that the prisoner has “neglected in his feverish restlessness the timely warnings of his spiritual counselor” (last paragraph on the ninth page).
Dickens, also, kindly but also with stunning emotions describes the diminishing number of hours remaining in the condemned man's life as shown in “The deep bell of St. Paul’s strikes--one!” That is intense!
Dickens is one of the first authors to describe the “inside” of a prison that thoroughly. Also, his journalism articulates a firm opinion on the on-going controversy of the penal theory. Dickens took sides in the heated debate over the “separate system” and the “silent system.” Some views of his supported the latter.
The separate system confined convicts in single cells for eighteen months, taught the prisoners trades and provided moral and religious guidance. The silent system got prisoners together and did not allow them to converse.
Dickens’ initial objection to the separate system was that under it, prisoners live better than low-class people outside of jail. He compares the diet of prisoners to the eating habits of individuals at a workhouse and finds the former better fed. The author also makes a really good point when he mentions that the time and financial resources spent tutoring and educating prisoners would be better off allotted to people that are “left aside” in the street, free of burden.